Apache Con EU in Germany - in November, in Sinsheim (in the middle of nowhere): I have to admit that I was more than skeptical whether that would actually work out very well. A day after the closing session it's clear that the event was a huge success: Days before all tickets were sold out, there were six sessions packed with great talks on all things related to Apache Software Foundation projects - httpd, tomcat, lucene, open office, hadoop, apache commons, james, felix, cloud stack and tons of other projects were well covered. In addition the conference featured a separate track on how the Apache community works.

The venue (the Hoffenheim soccer team home stadium) worked out amazingly well: The conference had four levels rented with talks hosted in the press room, a lounge and two talks on each of the first and second floor in an open space setup. That way entering a talk late or leaving early was way less of a hazzle than when having to get out the door - sneaking into interesting talks on the second floor was particularly easy: From the third floor that was reserved for catering one could easily follow the talks downstairs. Speaking of catering: Yummy and available all the time - and that not only counts for water but for snacks (e.g. cake between breaks), coffee, soft-drinks, tea etc. On top of that tasty lunch buffet with all sorts of more or less typical regional food. You've set high standards for upcoming conferences ;)